Thursday, 4 July 2013

Comedy in populist, mainstream Hollywood is currently in
quite a transitional phase. The mid-to-late nineties were Jim Carrey’s broadly
comedic rubber-faced golden years; with the likes of Dumb and Dumber The Mask, Liar Liar, but also the slightly darker,
edgier, left-field idiosyncratic gem: The
Cable Guy, in 1996, directed by a certain, (then up-and-coming) Ben
Stiller.

Late nineties teen-comedy, was the next order
of the day, followed in the light of audiences Screaming for the parodied side of Wes Craven’s Ghostface thanks to
Scary Movie, or high-school-set
students either: cleverly consulting Shakespeare’s more shrewish side, to
brilliantly decide exactly what were the 10
Things (they) Hate(d) About You in 1999. Just before that, a
bunch of teenagers were ravenous for their next raunchy slice of American Pie.

In 2001, Stiller
burst onto that very same mainstream scene with the uproarious Meet The Parents. Two sequels
intermittently followed, with varying success, and a steady stream of
commercially successful crowd-pleasers in between. Among them was 2004’s Dodgeball, an enjoyable, if somewhat
rather overrated ‘gross-out’ sports comedy.

This was the film that, if little else
established the dynamite pairing of Stiller’s collaboration with one of my very
favourite actors – Vince Vaughn.

Now they’re starring again, as one half of
four suburbanites, thrown together through the most implausibly outrageous of
circumstances. An alien attack has come to fruition in a Costco-inspired megastore of all barely conceivable locations.
Stiller and Vaughn, together with Moneyball’s
Jonah Hill and British actor/director Richard Ayoade - playing a self-assured
but ultimately unfulfilled misfit, form a Neighbourhood Watch group.

The style and premise – namely that of
forming a quartet of contrasting, 21st Century Ghostbusters, actually works (if not up to those dizzily
entertaining, box-office-smashing standards) – considerably better, and in a
slightly funnier, more involving way than Dodgeball
did.

That most fiendishly difficult of
equilibriums – the one between broadly comedic laughs while coupled with the
occasional innocuous scare – is actually obtained marginally successfully – if
not particularly memorably.

The dialogue is never quite as sharp as
expected, but in Vaughn’s wonderfully cynical vernacular of course, is
delivered with his now customarily quick-fire rapidity. He steals the film,
away from Stiller in a sense, with Stiller still stuck to playing it rather straight-laced,
while remaining a reliably staple presence in the comedy cannon.

It’s more left to Vaughn (as a likeable
everyman) and particularly Ayoade and Hill, to provide the majority of what
are, more often than not, fairly muted giggles when they should be unstoppable
ones.

The aliens themselves - summoned after the
impulsive meddling of a futuristic, spherical metal orb that blows up a cow
(much to their open-mouthed, enthused incredulity) – are welcomed rather than
run-from.

One of the funniest scenes, involves them
revelling in the prospect of having pictures taken with the seemingly dormant
alien (now in sunglasses), only to be the perilous, hapless victims of another
attack, moments later.

Human form also comes under suspicious
question, with a clever sequence where members of the public are assessed for
their extra-terrestrial potential.

First on the list of possible culprits, is a
very funny performance from Billy Crudup as an outwardly sinister, voyeuristic
next-door neighbour figure, somewhat reminiscent of Norman Bates – all squinty-eyed
and cold emotion - a vast antithesis to the reveal as to what’s actually
happening behind his front door!

Proceedings become more elaborate, but
slightly overblown in the latter stages, and it’s quite male-centric
throughout, but overall this is fizzy, undemanding fare, with a typically
appealing cast – it’s just not written with quite enough of the comic pop as
you’d hope for, given the talent involved.

Originally based on the pulpy series of bestselling novels
by Robert Ludlum, in 2002 - when Matt Damon burst into the intelligence
sub-genre with an unusually intelligent bang with The Bourne Identity – rivaling Pierce Brosnan’s ultimate
exstravagant last outing as Bond (the spectacular Die Another Day – my personal favourite Bond movie; fantastical in
every sense), Damon and director Paul Greengrass instead opted for gritty
realism and brutally visceral fight sequences. Bond produces obviously took
note of the surprising impact it made, as they of course then followed suit,
choosing to next introduce Daniel Craig.

Damon and Greengrass though, after the
phenomenal success of Bourne’s Identity,
Supremacy and Ultimatum respectively,
chose not to have the above-poster top billing, passing the mantle onto the
increasingly popular Jeremy Renner – importantly though, not playing Jason
Bourne, but rather in the role of brand new renegade agent Aaron Cross.

For my money, Renner’s a far more unassuming
presence on screen than Damon is, it’s just a shame that, rather like Damon, he
appears so devoid of emotive facial expression, that it’s very difficult to, in
turn, emotionally invest in his fate in almost any ensuing jeopardy.

Incidentally, those distinctly intermittent,
yet frenetically involving bursts of set-piece are extremely few and far
between. For the most part this is driven on a fuel of dialogue, only with more
of the dialogue and much less of the drive. James Newton-Howard’s only
occasionally punchy score is often glaringly present to only act as
ominously-strung padding from one action sequence to the next.

The director is the very smart choice of Tony
Gilroy. His film, Micheal Clayton is
a fantastic, quiet, slow-burner of a thriller, full of superb performances –
(in my opinion it was George Clooney’s finest ever dramatic performance).

The action sequences themselves are actually
extremely well-staged, make great use of bullet-ricocheting sound effects, and
are similarly brutal to Damon’s, with Renner proving to be in fine physical
shape – (he’s an increasingly dominant action star: Hawkeye in Thor and The Avengers - and he’s
previously played morally ambiguous agents already, in 2003’s S.W.A.T. and the fourth Mission: Impossible: - Ghost Protocol,
so he would be. It’s just a rather ironic shame that, as Aaron Cross, he gives
us his least engaging performance to date. It’s to the screenplay’s plodding
detriment, not his own fault, which spends much of its very overlong
running-time pre-occupied with what is often highly scientific expositional
terminology, all concerned with how Cross is genetically engineered.

Edward Norton is reliably terrific, equally
morally ambiguous as a cool-headed manipulator, and Rachel Weisz is extremely
strong in the somewhat thankless role of a scientist, but she is given a
singularly affecting scene under house-arrest, where a suitably frantic
infiltration follows.

From the outset, the screenplay treats this
installment very much as a continuation of the previous trilogy, with endlessly
elusive reference to ‘Tredstone’ and
the so-called urgent prospect of ‘Burning
the programme to the ground’ without ever even remotely attempting to
explain what the ‘programme’ actually is, or, more to the point, why Edward Norton
and his shadow-lit team want to do that so badly.

Previous, brilliant supporting talent such as
Joan Allen, the fantastically eclectic David Strathairn, and even Albert
Finney, are only there to make fleeting, blink-and-you’d-miss-them appearances.

There is an excellent climactic,
beautifully-shot red motorcycle chase, with Renner as always looking super-cool
in simple, black sun-shades, and it’s good that Gilroy, as he did with Clooney
for Micheal Clayton, gives his
central protagonist of Aaron Cross, a surprisingly intriguing, and fairly dark
back-story as to exactly why he is the way he is.

This, solidly entertaining as it is, could be
a potential reboot of the Bourne franchise,
with Renner possibly in future sequels – if today’s Hollywood franchise factory
is any accurate yardstick. If so, lets hope the next one’s screenplay sees that
Renner packs a little more punch emotionally, as well as physically, with a lot
less long-winded dialogue in between…